Hasta La Gadget!

Tivo has been bullish lately about releasing new products beyond its core DVR boxes. Today, we found out why. The company laid off nearly all the industrial designers of those products.

Intel built what could conceivably be the best set-top on the market coupled with a new way to deliver television content that doesn’t force you to buy into whatever cable TV monopoly is in your region. Then it handed everything …

At this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES), The Verge noted that TV companies had largely given up on 3D displays. A small company called Voxon is not about to give up on the idea, especially because their device actually projects light in three dimensions. They call it the Voxiebox.

In simple terms, Voxiebox displays a 3D image by aiming a laser projector at a screen that’s rapidly moving up and down. The 3D image is a bit like the light trails produced through long exposure photography, except this one’s happening in real-time. Your view of the image or video being displayed changes appropriately as you move around the Voxiebox, as if you were looking at a physical object.

The video below shows Voxon co-founders Will Tamblyn and Gavin Smith talking about how Voxiebox came about. Sadly the sound is worse than the video’s quality, which is a shame because their presentation is informative and inspiring.

As you can see the current prototype of the Voxiebox has a very low resolution, a death sentence in an industry stuck in PPI cold wars and currently under attack from the 4K marketing blitzkrieg. Another challenge facing Voxon is that content has to be made specifically for the display. You can’t just hook it up to your PC, media player or console and expect to see Call of Duty or Game of Thrones in volumetric 3D. Which is why it’s perfectly understandable that Voxon is aiming its first Voxiebox units not to home users but to arcades. On the other hand… arcades? Like, who-goes-to-arcades-anymore-arcades? Good luck.

Still, Voxon believes that their device will carve its own niche. Last year Polygon came up with an interesting story about Joseph White, an eccentric game developer who’s working on a game and game platform called Voxatron. Voxatron’s world is made out of voxels – volumetric pixels – and Polygon said White made his game imagining that Voxiebox would one day exist. Voxiebox, meet Voxatron:

That’s cool and all, but I don’t think that Voxatron or 3D chess (Voxchess?) is Voxiebox’s killer app. Aside from having a more respectable resolution, I think the device would capture the public’s attention and support more effectively if it worked closely with motion sensors. The strength of 3D objects is that they’re tangible – I think Voxon needs to seize that strength.

Take CastAR for example. Industry reputation and connections aside, Technical Illusions is getting the support they need with its augmented reality device because they’re taking cues from the tangible world. The great news here is that display-wise Voxiebox is much better than CastAR’s complicated setup. Voxon just needs to find the right artwork to paint on its canvas.

[via ExtremeTech]

You may or may not recall Google TV. That was Google’s first attempt at an operating system aimed at the TV. The biggest product to use that Google TV was was the Logitech Revue, which failed miserably and was retired. At CES 2014, a company called Hisense is showing off a device called the Pulse Pro.

While its not claimed to be running Google TV, C|NET reckons the version of Android that the Pulse Pro is using is the next iteration of Google TV. The device connects to your TV like other set top boxes and has a nice looking interface that is easy to use.

You can clearly see icons for surfing the web, Google Play, and other streaming services. The motion-sensing remote is said to be much easier to use than your typical Google TV remote. The little remote lacks a full keyboard and looks more like a remote from other home theater devices. The remote even has a mic and responds to voice search queries. Other features include integrated Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity.

It’s unclear when the Pulse Pro will launch or how much it will cost, but it looks like an interesting device.

[via C|NET]

Most “smart TVs” are anything but. The user interfaces usually seem like they were thrown together after a weekend binge on How to Use Flash MX manuals. And this is the big reason why you’ll usually find a set-top box …